Final Fantasy XV Finally Has An Official Release Date

After rumors, speculation and even a potential leak hours before the announcement from Square Enix, we now have an official fall launch date for Final Fantasy XV.

Announced during a special event hosted out of Los Angeles yesterday evening, the Uncovered: Final Fantasy XV press conference dished plenty of details pertaining to the upcoming RPG. The biggest piece of news, however, may have been a solid launch date to hand our expectations from. According to Square Enix, we can all look forward to playing Final Fantasy XV on Sept. 30, 2016.

Some folks have already played a small portion of the game thanks to an exclusive demo offered to anyone who purchased Final Fantasy Type-O a couple months back. If you’re curious how excited some folks are to get their hands on anything and everything XV, those demo codes were selling for a pretty penny online and there were even reports of some folks buying Type-0, claiming their demo and then trading the game back in.

According to the official website, multiple versions of Final Fantasy XV will be offered, but we’ll have you full details on that later in the day. For now, just remember to mark your calendar for Sept. 30.

Oh, and maybe also fire up your Xbox One of PlayStation 4 and head on over to the marketplace to grab a completely different demo for the game.

That’s right, Square Enix stealth launched a second demo called Platinum: Final Fantasy XV and, similar to the Bravely Default and Bravely Second demos, it offers content that won’t be available in the final game. Think of this as a kind of prequel side story to help introduce you to the world of the game and pass the time between now and Sept. 30.

In the demo, you’ll take control of a young Noctis, the main protagonist of Final Fantasy XV. Square Enix described the demo as “dreamlike,” where you’ll learn some of the basics of the gameplay like combat, spellcasting and even driving. Even better is the fact that your guide through this journey will be the always adorable Carbuncle, which is kind of like a fox mixed with a unicorn.

And speaking of Carbuncle, those who finish the demo will gain access to the summon in the final version of Final Fantasy XV.

It’s hard to believe that the journey to Final Fantasy XV is almost complete. The game stared its life as a Final Fantasy XIII spinoff and, over time, has become its own beast. All told, we’ve been waiting nearly 10 years for this game to finally get here. Here’s hoping it has been worth the wait.

And for those of you who stayed up late and have played the demo already, be sure to let us know what you thought in the comments below.